The Media-Publishing World is comprised of four massive tectonic plates called Audio, Video, Print and Software. These plates rest on a fluid called Technology that keeps them in continuous motion. Technology moves these plates at glacier speed, but every so often a bubble in the technological fluid causes a seismic shift that causes plates to collide, retract, rise, fall, emerge, or disappear.

The printing press, radio, film, television, VCR, personal computer and internet are all examples of tectonic bubbles that created seismic shifts of the media-publishing plates. The collisions of these plates create both shock and awe to all who bear witness. The shock comes from those who can’t see past the destruction of their old world; the awe comes from those who see opportunity in their new world.

Over the past ten years the world watched as the personal computer and internet bubbles caused a massive collision of the Audio and Software plates, which gave rise to digital composition, digital recording, and then, digital distribution. From the 2003 rise of iTunes to the quickly-responding file-sharing (aka piracy) programs like Napster and LimeWire, digital distribution ensured listeners no longer needed to pay for compact discs, and they didn’t —as much. The result: shock from the music industry and awe from consumers.

Over the years, mainstream music artists and publishers began to coalesce with consumers and all seemed to be in sync. Eventually, however, the much larger mass of consumers began to dilute the influence of artists and publishers. These consumer masses had an eroding affect on the high costs associated with composing music in professional studios, and the exponentially higher costs of marketing and releasing music to consumers. For decades these exorbitant costs created an impenetrable financial barrier-to-entry that helped publishers consolidate their power over artists and consumers alike. But time marches on and further advances in digital composition, compression and distribution, have eroded those barriers-to-entry. The technology required to compose, mix and publish music now comes pre-installed on consumers’ laptop computers. The exponential reach of social networks like iTunes, Facebook and Twitter have supplanted the prohibitive cost of marketing and distribution. Music has become fully and irreversibly democratized.

Today

This seemingly inevitable evolution of media production and publishing has since permeated every facet of the Media-Publishing World. As the music industry was entirely reconstructed through digital democratization, so too has the print publishing industry been transformed by binary code. And so goes the way of the film industry.

Almost from the start, movies have strove to continually redefine the meaning of “big budget”. The first film to cost $1,000,000 was released in 1916 and had a cast of thousands; in 1991, Terminator 2 proudly boasted their $100,000,000 budget and its cast of one (Arnold), but Avatar reigns supreme: costing $300,000,000 and having a cast of billions (of pixels). And the major studios, who are far and away the largest film publishers, couldn’t be happier.

Whereas studios rest on the twin pillars of production and distribution, independent filmmaking is comprised of three distinct pillars: production, distribution and finance. Indie budgets grew from the hundreds-of-thousands to the millions in order to cover the high costs of cast, crew, camera packages, film stock, visual effects and film processing. Production costs continued to rise. Investor relationships were the closely guarded secret of Hollywood insiders. As filmmakers struggled to cover their rising costs, financing structures became more convoluted. At the same time, advertising rates began to soar.

Unbeknown to filmmakers, the personal computer and internet bubbles had already put the massive Software plate on a collision course with the Video plate. Suddenly, shooting a movie no longer required skilled cinematographers, complex cameras, or film; anyone can now shoot a movie on the High-Definition cameras that they bought at the local electronics shoppe over the holiday, or on their new iPhone. Casting is conducted online (yes there’s an app for that) and background talent has too often been replaced digitally. That is, if talent is used in a film at all.

Editorial software now comes free with the purchase of your Apple computer. Final Cut Pro software, Apple color and low-cost output software and hardware virtually eliminate the need for a post-production house. Even 3D animation can be done at-home. Sound editing, mixing and low-cost output software like Pro Tools and DVD Studio Pro can all be purchased off-the-shelf at your local Apple Store or Best Buy. The production barrier-to-entry has been toppled.

So, does the fact that a movie can be constructed outside the studio zone mean Hollywood insiders will no longer hold the keys to open the golden gate of the “film industry”? Not quite. That golden gate sits atop the three pillars and two are still standing.

The Final Frontier

What are the barriers to a complete democratization of the film industry that will allow every man, woman and man-child to be his or her own mini-studio?

Financing and Distribution – the two remaining pillars.

The corollary to anybody being able to shoot a movie is that now everybody wants to make a movie. But no matter how easy or cheap it is to make a movie, it still requires capital. As a result, the masses that democratized film production are now demanding a democratization of film financing. This natural evolution started with the aptly named “Age of Stupid”, a small indie film that crawled out of the primordial ooze of conventional finance and eventually became the first film to successfully use the internet to solicit production capital from the masses. The idea germinated in 2002, but the producers didn’t start sourcing money from the crowd until 2004; by November 2007, they’d crowdsourced over half of their 500,000GBP budget. The film was completed in 2008, released in 2009, and the crowd received their first profit shares in 2010. Since then, crowdfunding has continued to adapt to the increased accessibility of digitalization, with a running leap in 2010 with the launch of dedicated crowdfunding sites like IndieGoGo and Kickstarter. These gifting sites accept funds on behalf of a film project, and once they meet their fundraising goal, the cash goes to the filmmaker, allowing a film to get made. Undoubtedly, this new fad of “gift-financing” will allow some crowdfunded films to get made that probably should not have been made, but in the meantime some crowdfunded films are now appearing at prestigious film festivals like Sundance. A premiere at Sundance no doubt allows your “crowd producers” who donated to the film feel like they got a little piece of celebrity with their $100 donation. But is this enough to incite a gift larger than $100, in order to satisfy the necessary increase in funding that elevates a $10,000 film into a $1,000,000 film? Probably not.

If your goal is to break the one-million-dollar threshold via crowdfunding, then you’ll need to tickle a person’s greed chromosome, which means you must offer something in return, like profit, i.e., an investment. Unfortunately, soliciting funding from people you don’t know through the internet or other forms of advertising violates numerous federal and state securities laws (see Golman Sachs recently botched Facebook investment). Nonetheless, IndieGoGo, Kickstarter and others have collectively raised tens to hundreds of millions of dollars for films, startups and other niche projects. These new alternative financing structures are yet to be transformed into a system that can finance features with investment, and therefore, aren’t ready to be incorporated into traditional finance models. But their foot is in the door, and it’s only a matter of time until film finance barrier-to-entry is toppled. I’m already aware of one US film that has received SEC approval for crowdfunding. I’m hopeful that we can put our minds together and find a way to scoot the transition from a grassroots structure into an industry-effective structure. It’s not about just being able to physically execute it; once the financing structures are revamped, everyone can afford to do it. When we can get beyond the costs to minimize expenses every step of the way in making a movie, budgets will continue to drop. If social media can facilitate a political revolution in Egypt, it should allow a filmmaker to raise 1m to make a movie.

The final barrier-to-entry is Distribution (or more specifically, Prints & Advertising, or even more specifically, Advertising.) The cost of marketing a film to a national audience has become so prohibitively expensive that domestic distributors, as a whole, have become an endangered species. The chances that a small, indie film will be acquired by a domestic distributor are slim to none. It’s irresponsible to assume that a film with a budget of less that $10,000,000 is going to get a theatrical release, unless the producer can raise additional monies to cover the prints and advertising costs. This is still true despite the fact that home distribution (delivering the media to viewers) has already been democratized vis-à-vis iTunes, cable VOD providers, Netflix, Amazon, Xbox, file sharing and others, who are cannibalizing each other in the quest to deliver to consumers the broadest array of media content as quickly and cheaply as possible. It’s a classic race to the bottom.

Prints themselves haven’t been democratized so much as they’re just becoming obsolete, like buggy-whip makers. Films are being distributed to theaters, broadcasters and home video providers via satellite or the internet. Every step of the filmmaking process, from filming through distribution, is all done on hard drives. There’s no need to ever buy film or strike a print, unless you need an archive copy for contractual or insurance reasons.

This leaves advertising. Generally speaking, if you’re not planning on spending at least $25,000,000 to market your film to national audience, then you probably shouldn’t spend anything at all. But for smaller independent films, social networks like Facebook and Twitter are giving filmmakers unparalleled access to millions of followers who can hopefully be converted to viewers and fans.

Just as in the music industry and the rapidly changing print industry, distribution changes everything. Distribution is the last piece of the democratizing puzzle. Although a film can get made without them, distributors still remain the final “judgment” by which even a finished film must acquire approval in order to reach viewers.

But this, too, will change. It’s only a matter of time until legitimate alternative forms of distribution rise and perhaps coincide with alternative forms of financing, thus ironing out the bumps to reveal the new, fully and irreversibly democratized film industry, whose entire life cycle will be comprised of ones and zeroes.

The Result

Every level of the filmmaking process will soon be communized. The effects on film craft may go both ways; a filmmaker may never become too skilled at one job while he wears multiple hats, never wearing one long enough for it to feel right. Or filmmakers may become more specialized, as we see in the introduction of new roles such as Digital Aggregators, a job once unknown in the business of film. How we meet these changes will ultimately prove how we will use the tools of technological development — for progress or to hindrance.

The call is to be proactive and not reactive. Already we’ve seen Blockbuster stores close down and Netflix’s innovative forethought in eliminating overhead and flipping VOD into homes. Also, with Obama’s call to make high-speed Internet accessible to 98% of the population, social media is sure to evolve the P & A requirements of film more than before. In order to use these vast changes to empower filmmakers, they must become industrialists. Filmmakers have to think past the horizon and foresee the change before it arrives. They have to continue to do what they do best: take risks.

The digitalization and democratization of the filmmaking process has the ability to bring the power to the people and cultivate new and fresh voices in film that deserve to be heard. The film producer is soon to be the everyman. No experience required. Sure, it will make it easier to make movies. But it won’t necessarily make it any easier to make good ones. It still requires drive, determination and perseverance to complete a film. And even with every tool in the toolbox, you can’t construct a quality film without vision, passion and talent.

The Wild West is making its return not to the big screen, but to the offices and home computers of anyone shrewd enough to navigate their way into the Film Biz and come out with a high-resolution Quicktime in hand. Hollywood’s borders are stretching into the wild beyond. And in this new frontier, there are no rules. Only laws.

A wonderfully written assessment and encapsulation of our industry, Jeff, and the very organic process of evolution that proves more than anything that it is alive and well. The Industry oligarchy will still sit on their thrones, but the masses are busy building a whole new “mobile” kingdom beneath them.

Like the comment “The corollary to anybody being able to shoot a movie is that now everybody wants to make a movie. “. Fact is, just because everyone can make a great movie doesn’t mean everyone should. Just because the technology to make a film can be simply bought at a local store means that to impress someone enough that they’ll pay your film means you have to be better than great, you have to be extraordinary. I think because the digital revolution created such a big effect that bar of excellence that a person has to reach is much higher than 10 or even 5 years ago. If filmmakers thought the business was hard 5 to 10 years ago it is at least 100 times harder.

Now after reading this article I’m left asking the big question: What’s your best advice for a filmmaker getting into this business?

I think the studios (and Pixar) continue to raise the bar on technological, visual and audio excellence, but I think Pixar stands alone among that group insofar as continuing to raise the bar on compelling stories that resonate with audiences of all ages. Therefore, new filmmakers should be inspired by, but don’t try to compete with, the studios or Pixar.

The falling barriers-to-entry that I discuss above (in production, finance and distribution) will allow filmmakers to make low-cost films that don’t require blockbuster returns. Therefore, emerging filmmakers should focus on making movies that resonate with themselves and their wider-community. The community that you’re reaching out to can be based in ethnicity, religion, hobbies, interests, occupation, social activism, popular culture, world events, local lore, etc. Those may sound like documentaries subjects, but they’re all rich with subtext that can appeal to a decent sized demographic (the better ones can reach across multiple demographics) and can just as easily provide a backdrop for horror, sci-fi, drama, romantic comedy, etc. All of this is ripe for social networking. Bottom line, the best advice for taking advantage of this democratization is to manage people’s expectations (especially your own.)

I’ve always enjoyed your thoughts and insights on the industry but you just took it to a higher level and made it a philosophical and societal discussion.

What I find really interesting is that this centralized global digital platform has decentralized and de-globalized filmmaking. It would appear that to be successful, filmmakers will have to concentrate on niche almost localized content which is kind of ironic.

This is all very well, but it doesn’t take into account that someone has to write the film, how to go about paying for several actors, technicians plus the secure distribution and financial return of such a democracy. It’s not like the music industry which can be boiled down to one person in a room doing everything and getting their tracks distributed.

Even at a micro film making level, it still requires paying for peoples time therefore some sort of upfront investment is required. Film makers are already making micro budgeted films and finding it near impossible to get them distributed. Sure, the technical quality is much better (4k digital cameras etc) and accessible, but some other revolution might be needed.

Maybe Facebook should get into distributing movies promoted on their network by its users, or something? It really needs another step other than a purely technological one.

Okay, Jeff. THIS is really spooky.
I’ve been thinking and agonizing over this ‘big picture’ story of yours for the last month.
Thanks for reading my mind and putting this down on paper. Er, digital as it may be.

Spot on great column… I’ve been looking at the 3 pillars for sometime now trying to figure out how this is all going to play out for the film industry. Coming from the publishing world I needed a transition and wanted to know the future impact of technology on the distribution of independent film. Also this column gives great insight into crowd-funding which I first heard of out of France.

Jeff: This is probably the most important piece of literature that an independent filmmaker or producer can read today. Thank you for putting it so well. I would add on thing: in the end — the most important reason for making a movie is telling a good/great story which needs to be told in a compelling well to engage the audience. Thanks again. Randy Greenberg

After of few days of digesting my first pass, I had to come back and re-read this post Jeff. You made one point that really resonated with me, and I’m sure other readers here;
(this seismic shift) “will make it easier to make movies. But it won’t necessarily make it any easier to make good ones.” Indeed.
Scripts still need to be written, polished, bullet-proofed, lined and scheduled. Directors need the skills to bring the pages to life. And editors need to combine the scenes into a compelling visual piece of story-telling. Lately, save a rare few, I’ve been having to force myself to watch the latest slew of indies. Not for lack of production values necessarily, but for lack of STORY.
I fear good story telling is beginning to take a back seat to the lowered production barriers and, perhaps, crowd-sourced funding. Like the music industry of the 80’s could the film industry be facing its own onslaught of rap artists/grunge bands du jour?

Great article ! Really tapped into some of the teachings of a few punk-film books I’ve read.

I’d would love to hear your thoughts on the Vimeo and Youtube community along with what you think about 3D being the new way of trying to keep the gap between industry and art, the same way ‘blockbusters’ ended the democratisation in the 70s.